Not Passing Fancy

Troy Aikman Isn't Flashy, But His Consistency Has Him Within Arm's Reach Of Joining The All-time Elite Quarterbacks.

January 28, 1996|By CHARLES BRICKER Staff Writer

TEMPE, Ariz. - — Consistency is an elusive quality to hang a Cowboy hat on, but that's the legacy Troy Aikman has built for himself in Dallas.

They will write on his football tombstone when he has retired from the game: "Here was a quarterback who, uh ... completed about 65 percent of his passes and didn't throw interceptions and, well, led the Cowboys to (fill in the number) Super Bowl wins.

There is much more to say about this rock-jawed sportsman from Oklahoma who faces life and labor as if he had lived through the Great Depression. But it would not excite a movie producer.

His haircut his simple, his suits well-fitted but boring, his conversation unembellished by bravado.

When he showed up for Super Bowl week with the slightest of golden stubble on his cheeks, he seemed genuinely embarrassed that he hadn't shaved before meeting the media. He wears dark glasses only outside when the sun is too bright for his eyes - a novel concept on this team.

He is, with rare exception, a two-dimensional figure on a football field this Troy Kenneth Aikman, flat against canvas with little texture or discernable emotion.

In seven years in the NFL, there isn't one dramatic come-from-behind win in his portfolio.

Nothing to match Joe Montana's winning TD pass to John Taylor in Super Bowl 23 or John Elway's Drive to Stay Alive in the 1986 AFC Championship Game win over Cleveland or Dan Marino's unending list of fourth-quarter rallies.

Because he lives in the same backfield with Emmitt Smith, one of the most extraordinary runners in history, there have been no 400-yard passing games. No, not one.

He has pitched only nine 300-yard games. Just two this season. His victories over Buffalo in Super Bowls 27 and 28 were so clinical in their perfection you walked away from the game unable to remember one Aikman throw that would be enshrined for posterity.

But if you consulted the statistical breakdown, you would see he had now completed 71 percent of his throws in the two championship games. His only interception came on a tipped ball.

If there is a defining game in Aikman's career, it came in 1991 against the Philadelphia Eagles - in a loss. Reggie White and his marauding friends sacked him 11 times. He never complained - during or after the game. Later, Eagles coach Buddy Ryan called him "the damn toughest quarterback we've ever played."

Aikman got off his back and took the Cowboys to the playoffs for the first time since 1985. A year later, he won the whole thing.

"My place in history?" he pondered last week. "I really haven't thought about it and what this game will mean to that. When I'm done, I'd like to look back and be able to say that I had a small mark on the game of football. That's the thing that drives me. I want to play as hard as I can and win as bad as anyone, but not," he cautioned, ''because of where it's going to place me in history."

With a win in Super Bowl 30 today Aikman would join Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana, who each have four, as the only quarterbacks to win three championships. Bart Starr and Jim Plunkett are the others to have won two.

To have done it at the age of 29 is phenomenal.

Aikman is the anchor of this team of mouthy superstars who have been allowed to roam free and run roughshod by coach Barry Switzer, and it has not set well with Troy.

This lack of discipline is at the heart of the Aikman-Switzer dispute that has left these men with little to say to each other beyond a morning greeting or evening good night. Incredibly, it seems to have had little impact on Dallas' drive toward a third Super Bowl victory in four years, which says a lot about Aikman's professionalism.

He is a Jimmy Johnson guy. They are two men who believe in workplace structure. Everyone practices. No one gets a day off if he's healthy. Practice starts right at 10 a.m., finishes right at noon. Film study begins at 2 p.m. Be there or pay for your delay. Aikman doesn't do limousines at the Super Bowl. Aikman doesn't lip off to the media.

Switzer is a manana guy. He doesn't discipline malingerers or under-producers. He rules with a velvet glove and his handling of John Blake incident a few weeks ago seemed to really open the gash between himself and his quarterback.

When Blake, the Cowboys' defensive line coach, departed to become head coach at the University of Oklahoma, he told Switzer that Aikman had a tendency to criticize black players over white players.

At the heart of the complaint was Aikman's fury at right tackle Erik Williams after being sacked on a crucial play in the Dec. 10 loss to Philadelphia. Aikman won't say much about the Blake remarks, but those who have talked to Aikman's friends say he was extremely upset that Switzer didn't quash the problem right there rather than let it smolder.